Our methods of production, based on machine-made products and standardization, have only one goal in mind: Create maximum product for minimum price. This mentality allows the common person to obtain a very wide range of products, far more than was ever possible 200 years ago. But what is the cost of these mass-production methods?
A Productivity Revolution
If you were to look at our lives now compared to how they were 200 years ago, there are some drastic differences. Our complex technological society is nothing like the life that those people had. That many years ago, obtaining food was much harder and more expensive than it is today and diets were completely different from what they are now. Back in those days, not everyone was capable of obtaining many material possessions, and merely having some of these basic products like pens really meant something.
Through a series of events several hundred years ago (curiously starting with the invention of the alarm clock), the production line was invented and suddenly, jobs that previously required a skilled craftsman could now be replicated by a machine. This meant that a raw material could be placed at one end and a product will come out at the other. This technology was originally used in shipyards to make components for war ships by the British but was eventually adopted by the colonial Americans during the war for independence. Americans at the time had tremendous natural resources but lacked the man-power to produce things. To fight the British, they used machine-made standardized guns with interchangeable parts which could be mass produced - an amazing idea for the time. Of course, the craftsman were anything but thrilled by this idea; their inefficient methods could never hope to compete with the standardized assembly lines.
Modern Industrial Productivity
The innovation of the production line is one of the most important innovations of all time considering our current modern way of life. The very computer you are using to read this wikipost was built on an assembly line along with countless other computers. All exactly the same, made by a standardized machine who's only purpose is to produce identical computers over and over again. Countless innovations in industrial efficiency have ensured that the production of these computers is as fast as it could possibly be.
Very few products are manufactured by hand nowadays. On the surface it makes sense, after all why would you buy a product that's very expensive when you can buy a standardized version for a much cheaper version? This eventually leads to a world where common people each have a vast array of material goods, all produced to be exactly the same. The invention of plastic and synthetic materials only made the process that much cheaper, since now the products could be made using the extremely cheap and flexible material that is plastic. Plastic was considered to be a "cheap replica" material and objects made in plastic were specifically made to replicate "authentic" products made with more expensive materials.
When money is the bottom line
Maximization and optimization are the most important concepts when it comes to productivity. The machine-made products are confined to a single product (multiple unique variations are not possible on the same assembly line), and therefore the goal is usually to create the absolute maximum number of products in the shortest time possible for the cheapest possible price. With this kind of ideology, the problems of sustainability become quite clear: What happens when there are no more materials left? Our ability to produce things as fast as possible will eventually be limited by the amount of material that exists on the planet, and when that gets used up, what will happen to industry?
This problem exists anywhere that industrial production is used, meaning that this problem is prevalent in almost every single industry that exists today. Furthermore, since corporations have the unique goal of maximizing profits, they will continue to find more and more efficient systems to use up resources faster than ever before. Not only that, but corporations will go to extreme lengths to ensure that they are maximizing their profit margins, using the cheapest possible materials and using unskilled workers who are replicating a simple task just like a machine. A single, most efficient method of repeating a single task, is an excellent way of producing a single product and consuming resources extremely fast, and when the people in charge have the unique goal of maximizing profits, the result is a wide array of sustainability problems ranging from sweatshop workers to the loss of local production and subsequent creation of a monoculture, where everything is made so efficiently nobody else can compete unless they have tremendous amounts of capital.
Wait, it gets worse!
Now what happens when you take Industrial Productivity Maximization and apply it to agriculture? A nation that eats nothing but corn. As demonstrated by the documentary King Corn, this stuff is everywhere. Corn is scientifically engineered to maximize yield and produce an absolutely insane amount of corn, all because certain people believe that continuously increasing productivity will lead to people having a better quality of life. Instead, the result is that many farmers end up growing a crop that has been engineered so much that it's no longer edible. Quite honestly, it says a lot about a product when the very farmers who grow it refuse to even eat it! This corn has gone through so much scientific process that it can no longer be considered food. Instead, it's a resource that must be processed by many different industries before it can be served in the form of amazingly unhealthy food which creates all sorts of health problems within the population. Planting a variety of different crops for the sake of providing a variety of nutrients is significant more beneficial, but also a lot less efficient. This just goes to show that efforts designed to maximize productivity and efficiency are not beneficial for people. Instead of providing people with plenty of food, which is the whole reason behind industrial corn production, the result is a fast food nation with drastically unhealthy eating habits, encouraged by a government that provides subsides to corn farmers who would otherwise seek other crops.
As it turns out, a lot of this corn ends up being used to feed cattle (who's metabolism was never intended to eat corn!), and once again the Industrial Productivity Maximization manifests itself in the agricultural system once again. The documentary Food Inc. shows the sheer brutality through which animals are subjected to in the factory farming method. The food given to lifestock is filled with chemicals, some of which are used to combat the problems associated with a corn diet, others are just made to ensure the animal gets so fat that it breaks it's legs if it tries to walk. After all, what better way to maximize production than making every animal produce more food! Many people nowadays think that we could never provide enough food to feed everyone in the nation without using these over-rationalized models, but the truth is that these industries are producing too much food, and now people spend on average 10% of their income on food instead of 40% like in the past.
Furthermore, this industrial farming is starting to spread to developing countries as well such as the Philippines, where mountains of white chicken are kept in close confinement with each other in factories which follow so many of the immoral practices described in Food Inc. Again the same forces are at work. Under pressure from the WTO to promote sales, the Filipino government has encouraged industrial factory farming as an economic development when in reality the result is just that local domestic farmers are incapable of competing with the falling domestic prices, just like the craftsmen were when the idea of machine-made production came into being.
Why Maximize?
Industrial Productivity Maximization is about taking as many short-cuts as possible and finding the quickest possible path to make the most stuff. Many of these short cut carry a hidden cost. This cost can be to the environment, to the animals, to the workers who's work is monotonous, to the craftsman who cannot compete with the speed of a machine, to the environment which is slowly but surely getting drained of it's resources. But that's OK! Because despite to all of these sustainability problems, at least we have created a world where everyone has access to an extremely wide variety of products! That makes it worth it, right?
Bibliography
King Corn. Dir. Aaron Woolf. Prod. Jeffrey K. Miller. Perf. Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis. Balcony Releasing, 2007. DVD.
Food Inc. Dir. Robert Kenner. Perf. Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan. Magnolia Pictures, 2009. DVD.
Burke, James. "The Wheel of Fortune." Connections. Dir. Mick Jackson. BBC. UK, 17 Oct. 1978. Television.
Industrial Productivity Maximization
Our methods of production, based on machine-made products and standardization, have only one goal in mind: Create maximum product for minimum price. This mentality allows the common person to obtain a very wide range of products, far more than was ever possible 200 years ago. But what is the cost of these mass-production methods?A Productivity Revolution
If you were to look at our lives now compared to how they were 200 years ago, there are some drastic differences. Our complex technological society is nothing like the life that those people had. That many years ago, obtaining food was much harder and more expensive than it is today and diets were completely different from what they are now. Back in those days, not everyone was capable of obtaining many material possessions, and merely having some of these basic products like pens really meant something.Through a series of events several hundred years ago (curiously starting with the invention of the alarm clock), the production line was invented and suddenly, jobs that previously required a skilled craftsman could now be replicated by a machine. This meant that a raw material could be placed at one end and a product will come out at the other. This technology was originally used in shipyards to make components for war ships by the British but was eventually adopted by the colonial Americans during the war for independence. Americans at the time had tremendous natural resources but lacked the man-power to produce things. To fight the British, they used machine-made standardized guns with interchangeable parts which could be mass produced - an amazing idea for the time. Of course, the craftsman were anything but thrilled by this idea; their inefficient methods could never hope to compete with the standardized assembly lines.
Modern Industrial Productivity
The innovation of the production line is one of the most important innovations of all time considering our current modern way of life. The very computer you are using to read this wikipost was built on an assembly line along with countless other computers. All exactly the same, made by a standardized machine who's only purpose is to produce identical computers over and over again. Countless innovations in industrial efficiency have ensured that the production of these computers is as fast as it could possibly be.Very few products are manufactured by hand nowadays. On the surface it makes sense, after all why would you buy a product that's very expensive when you can buy a standardized version for a much cheaper version? This eventually leads to a world where common people each have a vast array of material goods, all produced to be exactly the same. The invention of plastic and synthetic materials only made the process that much cheaper, since now the products could be made using the extremely cheap and flexible material that is plastic. Plastic was considered to be a "cheap replica" material and objects made in plastic were specifically made to replicate "authentic" products made with more expensive materials.
When money is the bottom line
Maximization and optimization are the most important concepts when it comes to productivity. The machine-made products are confined to a single product (multiple unique variations are not possible on the same assembly line), and therefore the goal is usually to create the absolute maximum number of products in the shortest time possible for the cheapest possible price. With this kind of ideology, the problems of sustainability become quite clear: What happens when there are no more materials left? Our ability to produce things as fast as possible will eventually be limited by the amount of material that exists on the planet, and when that gets used up, what will happen to industry?This problem exists anywhere that industrial production is used, meaning that this problem is prevalent in almost every single industry that exists today. Furthermore, since corporations have the unique goal of maximizing profits, they will continue to find more and more efficient systems to use up resources faster than ever before. Not only that, but corporations will go to extreme lengths to ensure that they are maximizing their profit margins, using the cheapest possible materials and using unskilled workers who are replicating a simple task just like a machine. A single, most efficient method of repeating a single task, is an excellent way of producing a single product and consuming resources extremely fast, and when the people in charge have the unique goal of maximizing profits, the result is a wide array of sustainability problems ranging from sweatshop workers to the loss of local production and subsequent creation of a monoculture, where everything is made so efficiently nobody else can compete unless they have tremendous amounts of capital.
Wait, it gets worse!
Now what happens when you take Industrial Productivity Maximization and apply it to agriculture? A nation that eats nothing but corn. As demonstrated by the documentary King Corn, this stuff is everywhere. Corn is scientifically engineered to maximize yield and produce an absolutely insane amount of corn, all because certain people believe that continuously increasing productivity will lead to people having a better quality of life. Instead, the result is that many farmers end up growing a crop that has been engineered so much that it's no longer edible. Quite honestly, it says a lot about a product when the very farmers who grow it refuse to even eat it! This corn has gone through so much scientific process that it can no longer be considered food. Instead, it's a resource that must be processed by many different industries before it can be served in the form of amazingly unhealthy food which creates all sorts of health problems within the population. Planting a variety of different crops for the sake of providing a variety of nutrients is significant more beneficial, but also a lot less efficient. This just goes to show that efforts designed to maximize productivity and efficiency are not beneficial for people. Instead of providing people with plenty of food, which is the whole reason behind industrial corn production, the result is a fast food nation with drastically unhealthy eating habits, encouraged by a government that provides subsides to corn farmers who would otherwise seek other crops.As it turns out, a lot of this corn ends up being used to feed cattle (who's metabolism was never intended to eat corn!), and once again the Industrial Productivity Maximization manifests itself in the agricultural system once again. The documentary Food Inc. shows the sheer brutality through which animals are subjected to in the factory farming method. The food given to lifestock is filled with chemicals, some of which are used to combat the problems associated with a corn diet, others are just made to ensure the animal gets so fat that it breaks it's legs if it tries to walk. After all, what better way to maximize production than making every animal produce more food! Many people nowadays think that we could never provide enough food to feed everyone in the nation without using these over-rationalized models, but the truth is that these industries are producing too much food, and now people spend on average 10% of their income on food instead of 40% like in the past.
Furthermore, this industrial farming is starting to spread to developing countries as well such as the Philippines, where mountains of white chicken are kept in close confinement with each other in factories which follow so many of the immoral practices described in Food Inc. Again the same forces are at work. Under pressure from the WTO to promote sales, the Filipino government has encouraged industrial factory farming as an economic development when in reality the result is just that local domestic farmers are incapable of competing with the falling domestic prices, just like the craftsmen were when the idea of machine-made production came into being.
Why Maximize?
Industrial Productivity Maximization is about taking as many short-cuts as possible and finding the quickest possible path to make the most stuff. Many of these short cut carry a hidden cost. This cost can be to the environment, to the animals, to the workers who's work is monotonous, to the craftsman who cannot compete with the speed of a machine, to the environment which is slowly but surely getting drained of it's resources. But that's OK! Because despite to all of these sustainability problems, at least we have created a world where everyone has access to an extremely wide variety of products! That makes it worth it, right?Bibliography
King Corn. Dir. Aaron Woolf. Prod. Jeffrey K. Miller. Perf. Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis. Balcony Releasing, 2007. DVD.
Food Inc. Dir. Robert Kenner. Perf. Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan. Magnolia Pictures, 2009. DVD.
Burke, James. "The Wheel of Fortune." Connections. Dir. Mick Jackson. BBC. UK, 17 Oct. 1978. Television.
Nierenberg, Danielle. "Factory Farming in Developing World." Worldwatch Institute. May-June 2003. Web. 14 Nov. 2011. <http://www.worldwatch.org/system/files/EP163A.pdf>.